Bill,


Be careful. Budget or no budget, today's LCD's are getting worse and worse by the model. Before buying you might want Daniel Browning to chime in on this one. He knows his stuff. I'm sure he'll have some good recommendations.


I'd recommend looking at the HP LP2475w, 24 inch. Some testers claim it's an IPS LCD which gives you the most accurate color right out of the box. I have seen reports though thatan "IPS" LCD is not 100% guaranteed, in which case it would be a PVA.


I believe the Ultrasharp by Dell can also vary from IPS to PVA. Niether of these manufacturers advertise what type on LCD they are using. The basic three are TN (extremely cheap, fast refresh, bright vivid color, color shifts drastically at increased viewing angles) PVA (mid-level,slower refresh, vivid more accurate color and wide gamut, color shiftsless noticealbeat increased viewing angles) IPS (high-level, fast enough refresh rates, very accurate color and wide gamut, very wide viewing angle) I'd be willing to bet Eizo's are IPS LCDs. Bill, alot of this stuff is off the top of my head so please don't quote me on all these statements. I think wikipedia and a couple other sites discuss all this at infinitum.


I purchased a HP 2275w inJanuary and am very happy with it. The only Con I can find is that you need to wait about five minutes for it to come up to full brightness. Once it's there it is very nice to work from. I use it as a supplemental monitor for photo processing and extended desktop for my laptop monitor. I wish it was 1920 x 1200 instead of 1680 x 1050. It would then match my laptop res. Thank goodness for Nvidia's dual screen driver. I have no problems with stretching or scaling between the two. It is a PVA monitor so the colors can be a bit over the top in default. Some OSD adjustment is necessary to getaccurate white balance andcolor output.


Here's a nice little piece about these two. http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15999regarding the Dell 24" click on the "flurry of problems" link. His findings were very interesting.


Hope it all works out well for you.


Chuck